In the lead-up to the French Open, Barty played only two clay court events. Her best result was a quarterfinal at the Madrid Open, where she lost to Halep. She closed out the clay court season by winning her first Grand Slam singles title at the French Open, defeating Markéta Vondroušová in the final, dropping just four games. With the title, Barty became the first Australian to win the French Open in singles since Margaret Court in 1973 and the first Australian to win a Grand Slam singles title since Sam Stosur at the 2011 US Open. She also rose to No. 2 in the world. Barty then followed up this title with another at her next event, the Birmingham Classic, to become the No. 1 ranked player in the world. She was the second Australian to be No. 1 in the WTA singles rankings after Evonne Goolagong Cawley. Barty's win streak came to an end at 15 matches when she was defeated at Wimbledon by Alison Riske in the fourth round.
In doubles, Barty partnered with Dellacqua in eight WTA Tour-level events during the 2013 season, including all four Grand Slam tournaments. The pair finished runner-up in three out of four such events, only failing to reach the final at the French Open, where they lost in the first round. At the age of 16, Barty's Australian Open finals appearance made her the youngest Grand Slam finalist since Tatiana Golovin won the mixed doubles title at the 2004 French Open at the same age. As a team, Barty and Dellacqua became the first Australian duo to reach an Australian Open women's doubles final since Evonne Goolagong and Helen Gourlay in 1977. This success also helped Barty advance nearly 100 spots in the world rankings to No. 46. At Wimbledon and the US Open, Barty and Dellacqua defeated three of the top-ten seeds at both events, including the No. 2 seeds in each case. The closest they came to winning a major title was at the Australian Open and the US Open, where they were up a break with a set in hand in both finals.
Barty began 2022 at the Adelaide International. She went on to win the title, beating defending champion Iga Świątek and Elena Rybakina in straight sets. At the Australian Open, Barty reached the final losing only one service game and defeated Danielle Collins to become the first Australian woman since Chris O'Neil in 1978 to win the Australian Open. She also became the eighth female player to win a major in three different surfaces, joining Serena Williams as the only two active players at that point to have achieved that feat. Barty did not drop a set during the tournament.
After a second-round loss at the 2011 French Open, Barty won her only junior Grand Slam title at Wimbledon at the age of 15. She became just the second Australian to win the girls' singles event after Debbie Freeman in 1980, and the first Australian girl to win any junior Grand Slam singles title since Jelena Dokic at the 1998 US Open. Compatriot Luke Saville also won the boys' title to help Australia sweep both singles events. The only set she dropped in the tournament was to Madison Keys in the third round, and her victory in the final was against third seed Irina Khromacheva. In the last major of the year Barty produced another strong singles result, losing to top seed Caroline Garcia in the semifinals of the US Open. Barty also won two more Grade-1 titles in doubles that season, one at Roehampton the week before Wimbledon and the other at the Canadian Open the week before the US Open. She concluded the season by winning the Junior Fed Cup for Australia with teammate Belinda Woolcock. Barty only played in one junior tournament the following year, where she finished runner-up in both singles and doubles at the Torneo International in Italy.
Barty began the European red clay swing with her debut at the Stuttgart Open, where she won her third title of the year, and continued her clay-court success by posting her best result at the Madrid Open, where she lost to Sabalenka in the final. However, she was forced to retire at both the Italian Open and the French Open due to injuries that prevented her from playing any lead-up grass-court tournaments and delayed her comeback until Wimbledon. There, Barty beat former world No. 1 and 2018 champion, Angelique Kerber, to reach the final, where she defeated Karolína Plíšková, becoming the first Australian woman to win the title since Evonne Goolagong Cawley in 1980, and the first top seed to win since Serena Williams in 2016.
Barty started her 2020 season in her hometown, at the Brisbane International, but picked up a disappointing second round loss against qualifier Jennifer Brady. However, she bounced back and captured her first title on home soil at the Adelaide International, defeating Dayana Yastremska in the final. After this, Barty entered the Australian Open as one of the favourites to win the title, and as the first Australian woman to ever play the tournament while being the WTA world No. 1. She lost in the semifinals to eventual champion Sofia Kenin, despite having two set points in each of the sets played. Nevertheless, Barty became the first Australian woman to reach the semifinals since Wendy Turnbull in 1984 and picked up her first top ten win at a major (quarterfinals over Kvitová).
Ashleigh Jacinta Barty AO (born 24 April 1996) is an Australian former professional tennis player and cricketer. She was the second Australian tennis player to be ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), holding the ranking for 121 weeks overall. She was also a top-10 player in doubles, having achieved a career-high ranking of No. 5 in the world. Barty is a three-time Grand Slam singles champion, claiming titles at the 2019 French Open, the 2021 Wimbledon Championships, and the 2022 Australian Open. She is also a major doubles champion, having won the 2018 US Open with CoCo Vandeweghe. Barty won 15 singles titles and 12 doubles titles on the WTA Tour.
Ashleigh Jacinta Barty, known as "Ash", was born on 24 April 1996 in Ipswich, Queensland to Josie and Robert Barty. Her father grew up in the rural North Queensland town of Bowen where he became a Queensland and Australian representative in golf and later worked for the State Library of Queensland. Her mother is the daughter of English immigrants, was a state representative for Queensland in golf in her younger years, and began working as a radiographer after retiring from golf. Through her great-grandmother, Barty is of the Indigenous Australian Ngaragu people, the Aboriginal people of southern New South Wales and northeastern Victoria. She grew up in Springfield, a suburb of Ipswich, Queensland, and attended Woodcrest State College throughout her upbringing. She has two older sisters named Sara and Ali. Besides tennis, Barty also played netball as a child, but decided to focus on tennis because she "thought netball was a girls' game" and because her sisters were better than her at that sport.
Barty reached a career-high ITF world junior ranking of No. 2, having excelled at both singles and doubles. She started playing low-level events on the ITF Junior Circuit in 2009 at the age of 13 and won her first title at the Grade-4 Australian International before turning 14. Barty continued to play only in tournaments below the higher tiers until the end of 2010, compiling a record of 24–2 in her five events that season while also capturing a Grade 2 title in Thailand. She played her first junior Grand Slam event in 2011 at the Australian Open, where she lost her opening match to third seed Lauren Davis. However, she bounced back from this defeat in the coming months by winning both the singles and doubles events at two high-level Grade 1 events, the Sarawak Chief Minister's Cup in Malaysia in March and the Belgian International Junior Championships in May.
For the second consecutive year, Barty began the season with a runner-up finish at the Sydney International, this time losing to Petra Kvitová. During the event, she defeated three top 15 players, including Simona Halep for her first career victory over a current world No. 1 player. At her next tournament, Barty made her first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the Australian Open, defeating Maria Sharapova before again losing to Kvitová, becoming the first Australian to make the quarterfinals at the event since Jelena Dokic in 2009. After a fourth round appearance at the Indian Wells Open, Barty won the Miami Open for her first Premier Mandatory title. She defeated three top-10 players in the event, including No. 2 Kvitová in the quarterfinals and No. 7 Karolína Plíšková in the final. With this result, she also made her top-10 debut.
Barty started her professional career in April 2010 just after turning 14 at an ITF Women's Circuit $25K event in her hometown of Ipswich. She lost her first match to Karolina Wlodarczak. Barty played in one more main draw that year in Mount Gambier, where she reached the semifinals in just her second professional tournament. Her first pro match win came against Ayu Fani Damayanti. In 2011, she entered three more $25K events in Australia, with her best results being two quarterfinals. Following her girls' singles title at Wimbledon, Tennis Australia awarded Barty a wildcard into qualifying at the US Open. In her first WTA Tour-level appearance, she was unable to qualify for the main draw, losing her opening round match to Julia Glushko. Barty closed out the year by competing in a playoff for one of the Australian wildcard berths into the main draw of the 2012 Australian Open. Despite being the youngest player in the competition, she won all five of her matches without dropping a set to earn the wildcard. She swept her round-robin group featuring world No. 133 Casey Dellacqua before defeating No. 239 Arina Rodionova and No. 167 Olivia Rogowska in the knockout stage.
Barty also made her Fed Cup debut for Australia in 2013 at the age of 16, playing in two away ties. In their February defeat to the top-seeded Czech Republic, she lost the dead rubber doubles match with Dellacqua. Two months later against Switzerland, Barty won her only match against No. 56 Stefanie Vögele to clinch the tie for Australia and keep them in the top-level World Group the following year.
Barty and Dellacqua finished the year as the third-highest ranked doubles team, earning them a spot in the WTA Finals. They had narrowly missed qualifying for the event in 2013 when they were the fifth-ranked team and only the top four were accepted instead of eight. In their debut, the duo were upset in the first round by the lowest-seeded team of Kiki Bertens and Johanna Larsson. Individually, Barty also established a new career-high doubles world ranking of No. 11 towards end of the season.
Barty represented Australia in the Hopman Cup twice. She made her first appearance at the event in 2013 where she competed alongside Bernard Tomic after Dellacqua withdrew before the tournament due to a foot injury. The Australians finished their round-robin group in second place behind Serbia. They defeated Germany and Italy in their first and last ties, but lost to Serbia in a close tie that was decided by a match tiebreak in the mixed doubles. During the tie against Italy, Barty won a lopsided singles match against former French Open champion and world No. 35 Francesca Schiavone in just 55 minutes, the biggest singles win of her career at the time.
Born in Ipswich, Queensland, Barty began playing tennis at the age of four in nearby Brisbane. She had a promising junior career, reaching a career-high ranking of No. 2 in the world after winning the 2011 Wimbledon girls' singles title. As a teenager, Barty had early success in doubles on the WTA Tour in 2013, finishing runner-up at three Grand Slam doubles events with veteran Casey Dellacqua, including at the 2013 Australian Open while 16 years old. Late in the 2014 season, Barty decided to take an indefinite break from tennis. She ended up playing cricket during this hiatus, signing with the Brisbane Heat for the inaugural Women's Big Bash League season despite having no formal training in the sport.
In 2013, Barty began playing primarily at the WTA Tour level. She only played in eight singles main draws in total after losing in qualifying at five tournaments. Although she stayed outside the top 100 in singles throughout the year, she established herself as one of the world's elite double players despite not turning 17 until the middle of the season.
In 2017, Barty reunited with Dellacqua as her regular doubles partner, and reached the quarterfinals or better at three out of four Grand Slam tournaments during the season. In particular, they made it to the finals at the French Open to become the first Australian women's doubles team to reach all four Grand Slam finals. They lost in the final to the top seeded team of Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Šafářová, who had also won the previous two majors. Barty and Dellacqua contested six finals on the year in total, winning half of them. They won the Birmingham Classic, where Barty also made it to the final in singles. This was their second career title at the event after winning it in 2013, and also their first Premier title together.
Despite her struggles in singles in 2014, Barty had another good year in doubles with Dellacqua as her regular partner. The pair won their second title together at the Internationaux de Strasbourg during the clay season. While they did not repeat their success at the Grand Slam tournaments from the previous year, they still managed to reach the quarterfinals at both the French Open and Wimbledon. However, they were not able to defend their title at the Birmingham Classic, but they made it to the final for the second consecutive year.
Barty took a break from professional tennis from September 2014 until February 2016, and played semi-professional cricket during the second half of that hiatus. Although she gave no reasons at the time, she later said, "I needed some time to refresh mentally more than anything. It became a bit of a slog for me and I wasn't enjoying my tennis as much as I would have liked to." Her family and coaches all supported her decision. Barty had no intention of retiring and continued to play casually during her hiatus, saying, "It was never in mind that I'd retired as such... I'd been coaching and holding a racket pretty much every day so I wasn't completely out of practice." During her time off, she also pursued her hobbies such as fishing, and built a new house close to her family. She ultimately decided to return to the sport, commenting, "After a break and trying other things, I missed tennis and decided that I wanted to come back."
After an 11-month hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Barty returned to the tennis courts at the Yarra Valley Classic, one of the three lead-up tournaments to the Australian Open, where she defeated Garbiñe Muguruza in two tight sets in the final. After this, Barty entered the Australian Open as the first seed in the draw for the second consecutive year and projected as one of the favourites to claim the title, but was knocked out by Karolína Muchová in the quarterfinals. Barty played her first tournament outside Australia in more than a year at the Miami Open, where she was the defending champion from 2019. She had to save a match point in her opening match, but then recorded her first top-10 wins of the year against Aryna Sabalenka and Elina Svitolina to reach her second Miami Open final in a row. Barty defended her title by defeating Bianca Andreescu in the final after Andreescu retired from the match. She became the first No. 1 seed to win the Miami Open since Serena Williams in 2015. This was also Barty's first time defending a title in singles.
Barty has been in a relationship with Australian professional golfer Garry Kissick since 2017, and announced their engagement in November 2021. In September 2020, Barty won the championship at the Brookwater Golf and Country Club, where she had originally met Kissick in 2016. Barty married Kissick on 23 July 2022.
Barty returned to tennis in early 2016. She had a breakthrough year in singles in 2017, winning her first WTA title at the Malaysian Open and rising to No. 17 in the world despite having never been ranked inside the top 100 before her time off. She also had another prolific year in doubles with Dellacqua, culminating in her first appearance at the WTA Finals in doubles. Barty then won her first Premier Mandatory and major tournament titles in doubles in 2018 before accomplishing the same feat in singles in 2019, highlighted by her victory at the 2019 French Open. Barty won five more titles in 2021, including a second major singles title at the Wimbledon Championships and two WTA 1000 titles. With her title at the 2022 Australian Open, she won a major in singles on all three surfaces. Barty also led Australia to a runner-up finish at the 2019 Fed Cup and won a bronze medal in mixed doubles at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Barty played in two Fed Cup ties for Australia in 2018. In their February tie against Ukraine, she won both of her singles matches as well as the deciding doubles rubber with Dellacqua to carry her team into the World Group playoffs. This turned out to be the last match Barty would play with Dellacqua, as well as the last match of Dellacqua's career before she officially retired in April. In the following round, Barty won both of her singles matches against the Netherlands to help Australia win the tie 4–1 and advance back into the top-tier World Group in 2019 for the first time in four years.
Barty was an all-court player with a wide variety of shots. Despite her short stature for a professional tennis player, she was an excellent server, regularly ranking among the WTA Tour's leaders in aces and percentage of service points won. She serves as the National Indigenous Tennis Ambassador for Tennis Australia. Barty announced her retirement from tennis in March 2022, two months after her Australian Open title and still ranked No. 1 in singles at the time, having held the ranking for all but four weeks between June 2019 and April 2022 when she relinquished the ranking. Her 114 consecutive weeks at No. 1 (not including when rankings were frozen between March and August 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) is the fourth-longest streak in WTA history.
Barty is the National Indigenous Tennis Ambassador for Tennis Australia. The goal of this position is to promote more Indigenous participation in the sport of tennis. Barty has embraced her heritage and her role as an ambassador, saying, "I'm a very proud Indigenous woman and I think that for me taking on this role is something very close to my heart. I'm very excited." She was recognised as the Female Sportsperson of the Year at the National Dreamtime Awards, a ceremony that honours Indigenous Australians, in both 2017 and 2018, the first two editions of the awards. Barty was honoured as the Young Australian of the Year in 2020.
In 2021, Barty started to partner with Jennifer Brady. They were not able to play many tournaments during the first half of the year, as they had to withdraw from both the Australian Open and the French Open due to injuries, but managed to win the title in Stuttgart. This was Brady's maiden doubles title, and Barty's first one since 2019. At the 2020 Olympics, Barty partnered Storm Sanders in the women's doubles and reached the quarterfinals, where they were beaten by top-seeded Krejčíková and Siniaková, and fellow Grand Slam champion John Peers in the mixed doubles, where they went on to become bronze medalists.
On 23 March 2022, Barty announced her retirement from tennis. In an interview with her friend and former doubles partner, Casey Dellacqua, Barty said, "I don't have the physical drive, the emotional want and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top of the level any more. I am spent." Barty became the second player to retire while holding the No. 1 ranking after Justine Henin (Henin briefly returned to the WTA Tour 20 months after retiring). In her autobiography, My Dream Time, Barty detailed that after winning Wimbledon, "the one true dream that I wanted in tennis", she started to lose her motivation to keep playing. In 2022, Barty also took up a role as "chief of inspiration" with the Australian telephone company Optus.
On 3 July 2023 she gave birth to a son.
Barty made her singles and doubles main draw debuts on the WTA Tour in early 2012. Her doubles debut came at the Brisbane International, the first event of the year. After losing in singles qualifying, she partnered with Dellacqua to make the semifinals in doubles while still just 15 years old. Their tournament was highlighted by an upset of the top seeded team of Natalie Grandin and Vladimíra Uhlířová, both of whom were in the top 25 of the WTA doubles rankings. The following week, Barty made her singles debut as a wildcard at the Hobart International, losing her opening round match to Bethanie Mattek-Sands. She then made her Grand Slam main-draw debut the very next week at the Australian Open, where she lost her first round match to Anna Tatishvili. Later in the year, Barty also received wildcards into the main draws of the French Open and Wimbledon, but lost her opening-round matches to Petra Kvitová and Roberta Vinci, respectively, both of whom were seeded.
Barty became interested in potentially playing cricket after meeting with the Australian women's national team in early 2015 to discuss her experience as a professional athlete. She was intrigued by the opportunity to play a team sport as a change from the individual sport of tennis. At the time, she had no competitive cricket experience, having only played casually with her family. Barty later approached Queensland Cricket about how she could get involved with the sport. Andy Richards, the coach of the Queensland Fire and soon-to-be coach of the Brisbane Heat, was immediately impressed with Barty's skill set, saying, "Her skill from the first time she picked up a bat was outstanding from a coach's perspective... She never missed a ball in her first session... That's what attracted me as a coach to her as a player, her ability to pick up things really quickly."